


Fading Blues & Salsa Shoes

by copycatgirl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Body Image, Dancing, Depression, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, Healing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Scars, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 17:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copycatgirl/pseuds/copycatgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set mid-season two, Dr Frederick Chilton is struggling massively with himself. Broken down physically and mentally from his encounter with Abel Gideon, Chilton is grappling with depression, loneliness and body image issues, and the only thing keeping him going is the distraction of his job. But then he meets intern Inelle Corey, and their consequent build towards a relationship has an influence on his mind he could never have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading Blues & Salsa Shoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beastheads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastheads/gifts).



> Spurred on by the sudden fandom wave of love for and interest in Dr Frederick Chilton, I returned to sections of the novels, and there I was reminded of Inelle Corey. I find Inelle a strange addition to the book for a couple of reasons, but at the same time I would love her to come into the NBC 'verse, be given a proper character and story, and we could see her and Chilton fall for one another, understand why they came together, and see that more human and loving side of him, as well as his own recovery. I'm considering launching a project on Tumblr called The Inelle Corey Project, to encourage others to introduce Inelle into fanfiction, fanart, graphics, playlists, anything else, as well as thinking about characters such as Reba McClane and Ardelia Mapp.
> 
> I could go about this all day, but hopefully I'll be launching the project soon, and if you'd like to talk about this more, please message me on Tumblr, I'm [mikksmadelsen](http://mikksmadelsen.tumblr.com/).
> 
> (Also, I know Chilton's own heritage isn't stated in the show, but I am making him Cuban-American, as Raúl Esparza is.)

When Frederick Chilton first met Inelle Corey, he was suffering from severe depression, but had personally diagnosed himself with "being a self-indulgent prat" with symptoms of "not being a real man". His diagnosis was incorrect, but he wouldn't have allowed anyone else to test him, even if they had asked, which they hadn't, and so that was the verdict he went with.

To misquote Gertrude Stein, abuse is abuse is abuse. Chilton was sick from what Abel Gideon had done to him, and as much as his guts were healing the same could not be said for his mind. He felt misaligned, like things had been taken out of his head as well as his belly and then put back in the wrong order. His cane was like an extra spine, and he could lean on it when his insides cramped and standing up was becoming tiring. There was nothing for his thoughts to lean on, and so they spiralled out of control, thick and black like toxic smoke and they billowed around him and choked him until his eyes watered and he had to lock himself away somewhere until he stopped crying. _Crying_. The concept had been alien to him for so long, and he hadn't cried since before he was a teenage. He'd worked with victims of abuse and seen them cry and while of course he'd _allowed_ it, he hadn't understood why it happened. It was easy to hold back emotion as far as he was concerned, and he didn't know why other psychiatrists in his field considered crying to be liberating or an emotional release. It was as base and slightly gross bodily function as any other, meant to wash foreign bodies from the eyes. He didn't see what good crying to do for a mind. He knew now how it felt to be holding back tears, like pinpricks behind the front of his eyeballs, and how letting it go was a release. Even when he wretched on sobs until his stomach ached, he did always feel an absence afterwards, a cleanliness, like the air after rainfall.

Before he had been discharged, the hospital psychiatrist had strongly advised against Chilton returning to work at Baltimore Psychiatrist Hospital for the Criminally Insane. She had suggested he take at least a year off, and he had outright sneered at her. A year to do what, exactly? To sit at home, rooms filthy with the smog of dark thoughts? To become sedentary, to fall out of time with the routine of the hospital, with his peers? She had told him that to be around killers, twisted men, men like Gideon, would trigger Chilton. Trigger. Gun. Will Graham had put a bullet in Gideon. Not killed him, but put him out of action. Of course, Will Graham was an intelligent psychopath, but it lessened his fear to know that Gideon was not invincible. Chilton knew all about trigger words, relapses, panic attacks, toxic environments, victim blaming. He believed that all of these things were valid when they factored into his patients' treatments, they just didn't apply to him. To the psychiatrist he cocked an eyebrow and said,

"Are we quite done? I'd like to call my office before five to let them know I'll be in on Monday."

If Chilton's mind was smoke, his body was oil. It felt thick and unmovable and like it left a mark on every place he touched and every person he came into contact with. His body had become so strange to him. As well as the messy scars on his abdomen, his lost kidney and his colostomy bag, he had to deal with all his movements having to be different, everything slower and heavier, like moving underwater, and the way even items of clothing that fit perfectly (and after the bit of fat he'd gained from being bed bound and on a feeding tube, that wasn't many) felt odd and uncomfortable, rubbed against the new, sensitive skin of his scars. Eating had to be different, washing had to be different. It was like pushing teeth through gums, necessary but painful. So this was why teething babies screamed so loud.

The night he first came home from hospital, he stood in his bathroom and stripped himself in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at himself, noting the changes, like he was taking stock. The scars were angry and pink, still held together with butterfly stitching after the silk suture had been removed. The skin puckered together along the largest line, the incison Gideon had made, and there were two smaller scars leading from it that the surgeons had made in order to make to put back what Gideon had removed and salvage what bodily functioning they could. The scars looked to Chilton like worms under his skin, and made him feel sick. He looked at his stomach, which sagged slightly, where he'd lost muscle mass and put on fat. There were faint, purple stretch marks on his hips. His eyes were blank and glassy as he looked at his body. It didn't feel like his own, as thought he was observing someone else, like someone else's body had undergone this abuse. His eyebrows twitched and he turned away. He changed his colostomy bag as he had been taught to in hospital, dressed in his loosest pyjamas, and put himself to bed. The mattress was good after the one he had been sleeping on in hospital, and he wanted to let it swallow him, wanted to sink down into sleep's silence. He was awake for hours, until exhaustion sent him under, and then Gideon tore through his dreams, plunging his bare hand through the skin of Chilton's stomach and pulling everything out while Chilton wept. He woke up with tears on his face and nauseau in his throat, and knowing more than ever that he must go back to work. Quiet and a lack of busyness gave the smoke so much more room to move and spread out. Working he could learn to keep it in a jar and only have to let it out when the pressure built up too much.

He hated that he'd had his body changed for him, without his consent, his power taken from him, so he made changes himself. He shaved his beard, experimented with restyling his hair. He had new suits cut and deliberately had them made in brighter colours, bolder prints, to give an air of complete confidence and to distract from his limp. The suits became a comfort blanket, a point of focus. If he could distract with the suits, peacock his way through a working day, then he didn't feel quite so bad about the fact that sometimes people's eyes lingered for a little too long on his midriff or edged around their words when talking about a particularly violent patient. He was functioning during days, held together like his stitches, and then every night he fell apart spectacularly. Frederick Chilton was what we impolitely refer to as a basket case. And then he met Inelle Corey.

His pen was in his mouth, as usual. Of course, like many psychoanalyses, oral fixations did not apply to him, and Chilton had decided that himself sticking pens, his thumbnail, cigarettes, glass bottles and paper clips into his mouth had absolutely no psychological meaning. His pen was in his mouth and he was listening to a particularly tedious conversation over the microphones between a psychiatrist who a Chilton loathed, mostly because of his tallness, traditional good looks and extensive publishing history, and a patient who had killed his mother because he had been convinced she was possessed by a devil. He'd had his feet up on the desk, but his upper thighs and lower stomach muscles were beginning to ache from this possession, so he lowered them to the floor again. There was a pile of paperwork to be filled out and filed on his desk, but he wasn't in any frame of mind to complete it. He was on the cusp of a bad day and he felt like looking at black and white printing of words like "violent" and "abusive" or "depressive" and "suicidal" was a sure fire way to make him stumble and plunge the whole day into the smoke. He flicked through the CCTV, watched Will Graham for a bit, but even he was being boring today, lying on his back on his cot but not sleeping, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Chilton felt a throb in his chest, and recognised it with distaste as loneliness. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken to anyone who wasn't a patient or a colleague beyond "Skinny latte to go, please" (although he wasn't supposed to be taking in too much caffeine, but he had told himself he deserved at least one joy in his life, and the skim milk eased the guilt a little). He didn't even want to blubber out, "mean old Gideon stole my insides so now I'm sad", he just wanted to talk to someone, anyone, about something, anything. Dr Lecter had once told him of a neurotic patient who had described loneliness as a "dull ache", and Chilton agreed with such a definition. That patient was dead now. Lucky bastard.

He was almost considering going to change his bag purely to pass some time, when there was a knock at his office door. It wasn't a knock he recognised, this one was sharp and brisk and somehow chipped. He muted the CCTV, took the pen out of his mouth and called,

"Come in,"

The woman who stepped into the office struck him dumb, and if he'd had just slightly less class his mouth would have fallen open. She was tall, she must have been at least five foot nine and made taller by her smart black heels, and her body was slim but framed perfectly by the curves of her hips and buttocks in her grey dress suit. Her skin was golden brown, honey and chocolate, and she wore her black hair long and in loose curls about her shoulders. Her arms were bare from the elbow, and her forearms had dark, downy hair upon them. She was carrying a file and when Chilton's eyes met hers she smiled, smiled more widely and genuinely than anyone had smiled at him in as long as he could recall. He got to his feet and felt very short.

"Dr Chilton?" she said, the smile staying in her voice. Her accent had a lick of Spanish in it.

"Yes?" he replied, his voice rising as if it were a question, like he didn't actually know if he really was Dr Chilton anymore.

"Hi, my name is Ms. Inelle Corey, I'm your new intern. I have my file for you here-- you don't have to read it, I know how boring all that crap is, but I know you have to have it for reasons of security and such."

He held out a hand to take it, and she took a few steps closer to pass it to him.

"Forgive me, Ms. Corey," Chilton said, more politely than he'd usually address any woman, especially one of her status in the hospital, "But I wasn't made aware that you'd be joining us..."

"Oh, really?" Inelle pondered, tilting her head, "You should definitely have gotten a memo-- ah, yes, see here?" She pointed a well-manicured, cut short nail at his desk, at the corner of a pink internal memo slip that was peeking out from beneath a stack of papers, dated two days prior. Chilton realised with a sinking heart that she was right, and he blushed the colour of the beets he was currently stockholming himself into liking.

"Oh," he said, and after a few seconds too long, "I am so embarrassed. I'm incredibly sorry. I must have missed it amongst all of this paperwork. I must look horribly unprofessional to you."

She waved her hand dismissively.

"No, it's fine, this stuff happens!" she grinned, "I'll give you my file-- and here's my ID, to prove I'm meant to be here," she flashed a card from around her neck on a lanyard at him, "I'll just leave this here?" She put the file down on his desk, "I'm needed to sit in one of Dr Green's therapy sessions now, so I'll leave you be. But just wanted to say hi! I look forward to working with you." She gave him another smile and she noticed that one of her teeth was snagged. It had character and he liked it. She was gone before he could say goodbye, leaving him with a lingering pink embarrassment and her puce file.

That evening he considered his height. He'd been average height until he was about fourteen years old, when school fellows shot up and he just didn't, and suddenly he was the short one. He liked tall women, though he thought he must look absurd even standing beside her. He realised how long it had been since he'd thought about sex. He supposed it was out of the question, with his broken body and reeling mind, and so he'd kept it out of his thoughts. But he couldn't stop thinking about it now, and he masturbated for the first time since his attack, not thinking about Inelle or any woman in particular, more about the very idea of sex, of touching and being touched, of hot skin on bodies moving and pressing and creasing. As he came, dark thoughts settled again and considered anyone touching him, particularly his stomach, ever again. At first he saw saggy skin and fat deposits and ugly scars and bodily embarrassment, and that was bad enough, but then there was a sharp crack and he saw blood on hands, his belly gaping open, organs against stainless steel. He limped to bed, curled himself up as much as his injuries and bag would allow, and cried himself into sleep.

Over the following few weeks, Chilton became used to seeing Inelle Corey over the course of the day. Inelle's job involved her being something of a handyman, doing bits and pieces here and there as she was needed. Towards the end of her first week, she knocked that upbeat knock on Chilton's door, then stuck her head around before she got a response.

"Hello," she said brightly, "I've got a while free, you need anything doing?"

"Oh," said Chilton, slightly taken aback, taking his pen out of his mouth, "Erm, I could do with a hand with filing. I find it hard to stand up for long periods of time, even with my cane, so standing in front of a filing cabinet gets tiring."

He suddenly realised what he'd said and felt a bit sick. He hadn't at all needed to give that information to justify his request. It was the most honest he'd been about his injuries to anyone, besides doctors and physiotherapists, as they forced it out of him. He had just willingly given information about his condition and he didn't understand why he'd done it. He was expecting her to now become uncomfortable, eye his stomach nervously like something was going to burst out of it, but she didn't. She held his gaze, and smiled, and said,

"Wonderful, where shall I start?"

There was a contented quiet as Inelle filed and Chilton filled out a report of Will Graham's most recent therapy session, in which he'd described himself as feeling "exposed, like a chewed wire", which Chilton had found to be lovely wording, if a little creepy. He was just writing this out when Inelle suddenly hissed,

“ _¡Mierda!_ ” and he started and made a sharp line across the page.

“Are you alright?” he asked, reaching for his cane should he have to get up and assist her. She waved a hand at him to demonstrate he needn’t get up, and then squeezed her left middle finger between her right forefinger and thumb.

“I’m fine, I just cut my finger on the filing cabinet. Health and safety missed that monster. Do you have a band-aid?”

“Er, yes,” he said, fumbling around in his desk drawers for a few long moments until he found one, slightly crumpled but intact in its plastic sealing. He handed it to her and she nodded a thank you and tended to the cut, and she had turned away to continue her task before he realised what she had actually said.

“You speak Spanish?” he said suddenly, surprised. She looked at him and blinked a few times.

“Oh, what did I say? Did I swear?” she looked slightly abashed, “Whoops. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine… I just didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” It sounded to him quite a pathetic statement to make, and he hoped she would expound so he didn’t feel like such an idiot, and thankfully, she did.

“I’m half Cuban-American,” she explained, and he found himself smiling.

“Oh, soy cubano-amerocano!” he exclaimed, “Es agradable conocer a alguien que habla el mismo idioma.”*

She smiled widely and replied with just a hint of a laugh in her voice.

“Good to have something in common,” she replied, in English, and he felt foolish, like she was mocking him. But then she winked.

“Spanish is a very sexy language, isn’t it?”

She turned her back and returned to filing before he could say another word, and he didn’t push it, trying to keep the blush off his neck by returning to Will Graham’s psychopathic poetry.

**Author's Note:**

> *“Oh, I’m Cuban-American! It’s nice to meet someone else who speaks the language.”
> 
> Translation by [Sofía](http://fantomesdenotrelit.tumblr.com/).


End file.
